On Troop Reduction Talk and Possible Repercussions

Annie

Diamond Member
Nov 22, 2003
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Must read-Kissinger:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101756.html
...For someone like me, who observed firsthand the anguish of the original involvement in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and who later participated in the decisions to withdraw during the Nixon administration, Casey's announcement revived poignant memories. For a decision to withdraw substantial U.S. forces while the war continues is a potentially fateful event. It affects the calculations of insurgents and government forces alike, so that the definition of progress becomes nearly as much a psychological as a military judgment. Every soldier withdrawn represents a larger percentage of the remaining total. The capacity for offensive action of the remaining forces shrinks. Once the process is started, it runs the risk of operating by momentum rather than by strategic analysis, and that process is increasingly difficult to reverse...

...America's emotional exhaustion with the war and the domestic travail of Watergate had reduced economic and military aid to Vietnam by two-thirds, and Congress prohibited military support, even via airpower, to the besieged ally. None of the countries that had served as guarantors of the agreement was prepared to lift a diplomatic finger.

All this demonstrated two principles applicable to Iraq: Military success is difficult to sustain unless buttressed by domestic support. And an international framework within which the new Iraq can find its place needs to be fostered.

History, of course, never repeats itself precisely. Vietnam was a battle of the Cold War; Iraq is an episode in the struggle against radical Islam. The stake in the Cold War was perceived to be the political survival of independent nation-states allied with the United States around the Soviet periphery. The war in Iraq is less about geopolitics than about the clash of ideologies, cultures and religious beliefs. Because of the long reach of the Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper significance than that in Vietnam. If a Taliban-type government or a fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of Iraq, shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces in Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic states would be emboldened in their attacks on existing governments. The safety and internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would be imperiled.

This is why many opponents of the decision to start the war agree with the proposition that a catastrophic outcome would have grave global consequences -- a fundamental difference from the Vietnam debate. On the other hand, the military challenge in Iraq is more elusive. Local Iraqi forces are being trained for a form of combat entirely different from the traditional land battles of the last phase of the Vietnam War. There are no front lines; the battlefield is everywhere. We face a shadowy enemy pursuing four principal objectives: (1) to expel foreigners from Iraq; (2) to penalize Iraqis cooperating with the occupation; (3) to create a chaos out of which a government of their Islamist persuasion will emerge as a model for other Islamic states; and (4) to turn Iraq into a training base for the next round of fighting, probably in moderate Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan....
 

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